Roche to Slash Approximately 350 IT Jobs by End of 2017

July 5, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

BASEL, Switzerland – Swiss drugmaker Roche will terminate approximately 350 information technology (IT) employees across the globe by the end of 2017.

Roche said 100 of the cuts will impact workers based in Switzerland and 100 IT employees in the United States, Reuters reported this morning. The remaining 150 IT workers slated to receive pink slips are based around the globe, Reuters said. While the news is dire for the drug giant’s IT workers, Roche said it plans on adding 300 positions at its shared services locations, including Madrid and Kuala Lumpur, Reuters reported. A Roche spokesperson told Reuters that the company plans to make further announcements about the new positions at an unspecified later date.

It was not clear why Roche was eliminating the 350 IT workers, but it could be part of a restructuring the company undertook this year to address the “underutilization” of its portfolio of medicines. Roche is facing the loss of revenue from some of its aging drugs, including cancer therapies Rituxan and Herceptin. Roche though does have a strong pipeline and is preparing for the future, which includes its new late-stage drug Gazyva that Roche argues is an improvement over its own Rituxan.

Last year, Roche announced that it would vacate four manufacturing sites in the United States and Europe, displacing approximately 1,200 employees as part of a restructuring effort for the manufacturing of its small molecule products. Roche said the affected sites are in Florence, South Carolina, Clarecastle in Ireland, Leganes in Spain and Segrate in Italy. In order to evade job losses, Roche said it will look for divestment opportunities, as opposed to immediately planning to close the sites. Roche said the restructuring effort will begin in 2016 and continue through 2021. Roche employs approximately 91,000 employees in 100 countries.